Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

He’d been there, I thought, grinding my teeth. He’d showered and seen me sleeping.

Bullshit, he can’t see.

My head felt so heavy that I just wanted to fall back onto my pillow. My eyes felt like somebody had poured half a sandbox in them. I closed them and imagined my fist smacking Marlon’s face. I licked my lips, and suddenly they tasted salty.

They were indeed sitting around the table, which was already set. They were all in a better mood than I’d ever seen. The guru was telling a joke that I only caught the end of, and there was simply nothing funny about it. The camera was nowhere to be seen. Kevin was standing at the stove frying eggs, sunny-side up. The place smelled of butter and burnt wood.

I straightened the sunglasses on my nose. They were all sitting in the same places they had yesterday. Janne was wearing a white dress and her black, still slightly wet hair fell to her shoulders. She didn’t look up when I came in. She was distracted. Marlon was leaning down to her and whispering something in her ear, and she nodded and laughed. I shoved my balled fist in the pocket of my pants.

“What happened to you?” the guru asked cheerfully. “Sleep poorly?”

“Slept great.” I poured myself a glass of orange juice.

“I found an iPod in front of the building, who does is it belong to?” The guru held up the little silver device.

“Marlon,” I said as everyone looked at the stupid thing blankly.

“How did it get there?” The guru put the iPod on the table in front of Marlon. Marlon silently slipped it into his pocket.

The plan for today was to go someplace together. The guru said he wasn’t there to lug groceries around for six big guys — or rather five big guys and one lady. We needed to decide what we wanted to make and then go shopping for the ingredients together and bring it all home. Who wanted to go first?

Kevin was the only one who spoke up.

I drank the juice, which sat uncomfortably in my cramped stomach, and studied Janne and Marlon. I wanted to know whether their faces had changed since yesterday. If they themselves had changed. I devoured them with my eyes. I wondered whether the marks on Marlon’s face were the imprint of Janne’s pillow. I wondered why the guru was permitting this Sodom and Gomorrah. Whether he even noticed what was going on here. Whether Janne’s mother would think it was cool that Janne was in such demand here that she could pick out her companion for the night.

I was ready to deploy the entire arsenal of weapons so as not to see Marlon next to Janne. Nothing was verboten: I would have no problem tattling on him, denouncing him, or physically hurting him. I felt like I wasn’t even me anymore but rather the Rottweiler, capable only of drooling and biting.

“Stop eating,” I said to Friedrich, who was spreading a third roll with butter, cream cheese, and jam.

“Go fuck yourself,” answered Friedrich. I was so surprised I didn’t know how to respond. Even Janne stopped massaging Marlon under the table for a second and turned her almond-shaped eyes on us.

“Good morning, Marek,” she said, as if she had just realized I was there.

Good morning, roller-slut was on the tip of my tongue. And that was the nicest description of her that occurred to me. I hardly recognized myself anymore. I hadn’t felt so attacked since the Rottweiler.

I carved up a piece of bacon just to have something to do. I wasn’t hungry anymore. The others had already stood up and headed off in various directions. Friedrich shuffled over to the sink with his shoulders slumped.

Marlon was standing at the top of the stairs with a hand on the bannister. I thought about how much I had enjoyed the feeling of the bannister’s smooth wood yesterday. Now he had his hand on exactly the same spot. I never wanted anyone to touch anything that meant something to me, ever again. I got up and went up the stairs toward Marlon and ripped off my sunglasses so I could see him better. Marlon turned his head toward me before I even tapped him on the shoulder.

“Can she feel anything at all?” I asked. “Down below, I mean?”

Everything went quiet behind me. Marlon turned his whole body to me. Then he put a hand on my shoulder, practically hugging me. His other hand he put on my head. I realized too late that he was just finding his bearings with that hand. His punch hit me right in the middle of my face and took me off my feet. I lost my balance and fell down the steps.

It was a little bit like the other time but also completely different. Once again I had no face and I pressed my hand, which hadn’t been able to protect me, to my face — only this time there was no animal attached to it. There where my face had been was now a raw schnitzel. No upstanding person would ever think to mutilate a good cut of meat like that. It hurt, but the pain felt strange, like it wasn’t a part of me. And anyway I didn’t generally have much of a problem with pain anymore. These days I could put my hand right on a burner and not even realize I’d charred my fingertips. Maybe back then I’d gotten an overdose of pain medication that was going to last for the rest of my life.

“Take your hands away from your face,” I heard Richard’s voice. “It’s not like it could get much worse anyway.”

When I didn’t budge, somebody tugged on my wrists. I kicked and — I was happy to feel — caught something soft and squishy. Moans of several different pitches rang out.

I have wanted to scream. They said I screamed back then. I didn’t want to know the details — I would never have attributed the high-pitched, unmanly sound that rang in my ears to this day with myself. I felt their eyes on me, on the backs of my hands, the good one as well as the mangled one, on that which my hands could never really hide, just as the sunglasses couldn’t, either. I felt more naked than naked, like they had skinned me to see what I looked like underneath. I swung both elbows and hit someone else, someone solid. Then I sensed a moist, burning touch on the sides of my hands and I growled.

“I’m just wiping off the blood,” said Richard.

“Can you move?” To judge by the sound of his voice, the guru had already shat himself.

The question interested me. My face wasn’t the only thing that hurt. So did everything from my neck down. That was also a big difference from back then. The Rottweiler had also knocked me over, and I had hit the back of my head and my ass. But it didn’t really play much of a role. Now for the first time I discovered I had a spine, and I wasn’t sure I could still use it. I was suddenly aware of my shoulder blades and hipbones in a way that I didn’t like.

“Not sure,” I answered the guru. My voice sounded strange. I felt bad for the guru. If I ended up a quadriplegic he would be in some seriously deep water.

“Did someone get that on film?” I asked.

The cold washcloth slapped at my face again. I shoved it aside, fought gravity, and sat up with a groan. Something fell into my lap. I felt for the sunglasses and put them on and then opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was the face of the guru. In it I saw nothing but pure, distilled relief: like somebody had promised him a share of the winnings from a lottery ticket and then changed their mind, and then in the end they had paid him after all. Obviously he was of the opinion that somebody who could sit up on his own wasn’t badly injured. I basically believed the same thing. Richard reached toward my face unprompted and straightened my glasses. Now I saw it, too: one lens was broken.

I looked into the distance through the cracked glass. Janne was nowhere to be seen. Marlon was standing off to the side. The others were all kneeling around me and the shock, mixed with a dash of morbid curiosity, slowly spread across their faces. The guru looked as if he had just stepped in dog shit.